by Ben Whedon
Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly expressed opposition to voter ID laws, but her campaign recently required attendees to show valid ID to confirm their attendance at one of her rallies.
The event took place Friday at the Desert Diamond Arena near Phoenix, Arizona. Ahead of the event, a campaign email sent requiring participants to confirm attendance and show government-issued identification
The requirement drew criticism from conservatives online, who have opposed Harris’ past voter ID rules and other measures aimed at ensuring election integrity.
“Democrats in Action: Requiring a government-issued ID to vote? Racist voter suppression!!! Requiring a government-issued ID to attend a Kamala Harris rally? Completely reasonable,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wrote on X.
President Joe Biden in 2021 he hit Harris led the administration’s voting rights initiatives, in which role she frequently criticized legislative actions aimed at ensuring that only eligible voters cast ballots.
However, while running for president in her first campaign, she advocated for paper ballots as the best way to secure elections, making these comments in the context of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“We proposed that part of the infrastructure investment should be earmarked for upgrading the states’ infrastructure around elections.” she said in 2019“Because guess what? It turns out that despite everything technology has given us, good and bad, the best and most secure way to conduct elections? Paper ballots.”
“Because I say it half-jokingly, half-seriously: Russia cannot cut a sheet of paper,” she added.
While campaigning as Biden’s vice presidential candidate, Harris criticized “oppressive voter ID laws, racial gerrymandering, voter roll purges, closing precincts and shortening early voting days,” saying the measures were “deliberately targeted at communities of color,” Fox reported.
In addition, since Biden appointed her, Harris has scrutinized state-level efforts to restrict mail-in voting and verify the legitimacy of a ballot or voter. Georgia, in particular, has been in her crosshairs.
When the bill was passed in 2021, Harris ridiculed it in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, calling it “another attempt to restrict people from voting.”
Recently, in January, Harris met with suffrage defenders in Atlanta, Georgia, where she advocated for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a proposed expansion of federal voting rights protections that ultimately did not become law.
While there, she pointed to what the White House called an “all-out attack on voting” by “extremists,” referring to Republican efforts to secure the Georgia election that were prompted in part by Trump’s criticism of alleged irregularities.
“And yet we’ve seen, for example, in the state of Georgia, anti-voting laws, laws that have limited the number of drop boxes for voting and made it illegal to even deliver food and water to people standing in line for hours.” Harris saidaccording to the Georgia Recorder.
Georgia was one of several states that were widely covered by former President Donald Trump, who claimed that massive voter fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The once-deep-red state backed a Democrat in a presidential election for the first time since 1992, when it backed Bill Clinton. Biden’s narrow lead drew significant attention to alleged irregularities in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta. District Attorney Fani Willis further fueled news cycles with her subsequent case against Trump.
In the wake of the election dispute, lawmakers passed sweeping changes to election security laws that quickly became a target for left-wing voting rights activists amid accusations of discrimination.
For example, Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight Inc. led a legal challenge to state election measures, even though a U.S. District Judge Steve C. JonesObama nominee sides with the Peach State in September 2022
“While Georgia’s election system is not perfect, the practices at issue do not violate either the Constitution or the VRA. [Voting Rights Act]”- he wrote then.
Additionally, the state’s Election Integrity Act of 2021 survived additional legal scrutiny when U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee ruled last October that he had rejected a federal Justice Department request to block the bill’s provisions regarding ballot drop boxes, voter ID requirements for absentee voting and a ban on line heating. Line heating is the practice of providing voters with food and water while they wait to vote.
Boulevard the issue was specifically addressed with claims that “Black voters wait in longer lines at significantly higher rates than white voters” and that ballot box regulations will have a “disparate impact on Black voters.”
Just the News has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment.
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Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X.
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Kamala Harris.
